Want to get this daily news briefing by email? Here's the sign-up. 

WHAT WE'RE WATCHING

UGLY DETAILS – Florida State law professor Dan Markel was shot twice at close range by Sigfredo Garcia five years ago, in a murder-for-hire plot that Garcia's sometimes girlfriend Katherine Magbanua helped arrange, according to testimony from a key prosecution witness Tuesday. As Karen Sloan reports, Luis Rivera told a Tallahassee jury in the Markel murder trial that he and his childhood friend Garcia were paid to travel from Miami to Tallahassee to kill the law professor so that Markel's ex-wife could relocate to South Florida with the couple's two children—a move the former spouses had wrangled over in court. Garcia and Magbanua are standing trial for first-degree murder, while Rivera in 2016 pleaded guilty to second-degree murder.

WILMER-BOUND – Most premier law firms would be happy to add a former special counsel, FBI director or U.S. attorney for a prime region like Northern California to their roster. With Robert Mueller, Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr gets all three. Dan Packel reports on what the 75-year-old former special counsel—along with special counsel team members Aaron Zebley and James Quarles—brings to the firm, which has a longstanding reputation for expertise in investigations.

AT ODDS – Two legal industry consultancies that track law firm mergers issued very different assessments of merger activity for the third quarter of 2019 this week, with one detailing a slowdown and the other suggesting it was a law firm lovefest. But, as David Thomas reports, however you count them, mergers tallies this year seem lackluster compared with the banner year in 2018, says one law firm consultant.